I couldn’t help but think of how shallow and ignorant a certain writer and his Editor in Chief at the Seattle Weekly looked after listening to Governor Palin’s speech at the Republic High School graduation. Here, this writer could have sought out an interesting backstory as to why the Governor chose to pay her own way to give a commencement speech in this particular small town. Instead, he chose use his column to demean Governor Palin and small towns, while his boss took to insulting everyone’s intelligence.

Today, Tony Lee reported on the story that Governor Palin told those graduates about how their town helped her father so long ago:

Palin told the audience a story about a teacher who had a dream to move to Alaska, America’s last frontier, and may have only gotten there because of the random kindness of strangers in a small town that looked out for the other fellow.

As can be see in the video of her remarks, the audience was listening with rapt attention.

Palin said moving to the “wild last frontier” was a “risky endeavor” for the teacher, especially because the man did not “have much money at all.”

She said the teacher was not afraid of hard work and sent “his wife and three babies ahead” of him to Skagway, Alaska.

Describing the teacher as one of those “early bitter clingers” because he had a gun among his belongings in his brown Ford station wagon, Palin said his car broke down out in the “middle of nowhere,” and he was stuck on his way to Alaska 49 years ago.

She said he thought he was “doomed” because “this big repair job would cost way more than he had.”

“It appeared like the man’s dream was over before it began,” Palin said. “Maybe it was just not meant to be with the obstacles in the world.”

Palin said the teacher somehow made it to the next town, found a mechanic, got to know “the very nice people of the town” and “told them about the life he hoped to live in Alaska.”

She said the teacher got a “lesson in the plain old everyday kindess of small town America” when the mechanic charged him “just ten bucks” and the “nice people sent him on his way North to follow his dream.”

“That schoolteacher was my Dad, Mr. Heath,” Palin said. “That small town was your small town. It was Republic, Washington. That mechanic was a guy named Mr. Carter. And my dad has never forgotten him or the kindess shown by this town.

Palin continued, “You got us on our path.”

She noted that power players and troubled political writers who belittle small town America got “wee-wee’d” up and were “tsk-tsking” her when they heard she had accepted Republic High School’s invitation to speak at graduation.

The former Alaska governor who most resonates with conservatives and Tea Partiers said these elite and snobby writers “just don’t get it.” They certainly do not understand why small towns like Republic are special, Palin said.

She said her message to the “high and mighty” was that though “this town may be a small part of the great American republic, it is big on values.”

“Your town exemplifies all that is great about our great country,” Palin said. “I’m here to thank you for that.”